The smile drains off his face. He studies me for a moment. Then he leans across the seat and kisses me. His lips tickle my mouth, and his masculine smell fills my nostrils.
Long before I’m ready, he pulls away. “That’s what I call a successful date.”
I burst out laughing. “I can accept that.”
He gets out and hands me out of the passenger side. He walks me to the door and kisses me again. “Good night, Miss Nichols.”
“Good night, Detective. Thank you for a wonderful time.”
I slip into the house, trying to be quiet so I won’t get assaulted by Zack asking a ton of questions. I ease the door closed and let out a shaky sigh. For a “real” date, it went pretty well—a lot better than I hoped. It went well even if it didn’t go as planned.
I wasn’t really all that psyched about the stage show anyway. I would have loved to go, but I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything. The connection between David and me matters a lot more, and making the change in plans was no big deal.
I head for the stairs when I spot Zack on the couch. His stocking feet are resting on the coffee table and his laptop is perched on his lap. He gives me a cursory glance and goes back to scowling at his screen. “Oh, hey, Mom? How was your night?”
“Pretty good. What are you doing down here? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
Instead of making a joke out of it or rolling his eyes like he usually does, he hitches himself up on the couch. “I’ve been doing some research on Jose Santiago’s death. Take a look at this.”
“You shouldn’t do that,” I tell him. “One detective in the family is more than enough.”
He doesn’t respond. He turns his laptop screen so I can see it. “See this? These are the pictures you showed me of that ritual scene you said the killer copied from the internet. I did a reverse image search on it and look what I found.”
I peer at his screen. “I don’t understand what you’re showing me.”
“It’s the same scene. It’s from a movie…” He examines the page. “DevilSpawn 4: Dawn of the Warlock. The killer copied it from a movie.”
“Well, that doesn’t help me much,” I retort. “Anybody could have seen that movie and copied the scene. It does nothing to help me whittle down the list of suspects.”
“Maybe not,” he concedes, “but it does prove that no one involved in this case was actively practicing the occult—not the killer, not Jose—no one. It’s a fake. It’s a ruse to distract you and the detective so you don’t pay attention to the other evidence.”
A cloud lifts off my mind. “You’re right! Thanks. That is a big help.”
“Anytime, Mom.” He goes back to what he’s doing.
7
I get up early the next morning. After lying awake in bed thinking things over into the small hours, I finally came up with a plan. I go to the kitchen first and make a pot of coffee. Then I make the biggest, fanciest, most expensive breakfast imaginable.
Zack comes downstairs in his pajamas with his hair going in all directions. He flops into a chair at the dining room table and stares straight in front of him until I put a cup of coffee in his hand.
He starts to perk up when I lay before him a plate of eggs, bacon, and a bagel with cream cheese and lox on a placemat. His head shoots up, and his eyebrow quiver. “Mom? What’s going on?”
I ease into the chair opposite him. “I was going to ask you to cover the store today. I want to go over to Peterborough for a few hours.”
“How are you going to get there without a car?’
I fidget in my seat. “Well, I was… you know…”
“No, I don’t know, Mom. How do you plan to get there—hitchhike?”
I turn bright red. I can’t look at him. “No, I don’t plan to hitchhike.”
He takes another swig of his coffee. “If you don’t tell me, I won’t cover the store. I couldn’t be responsible for you endangering your safety.”
“Fine,” I snap. “I planned to go with David Graham.”
His coffee cup hits the table. “Oh, I get it. You’re going there to investigate Jose Santiago.”
I bow my head and mumble into my lap. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
I look up. “You will?”
“Sure. If you’re with him, you’ll be fine. I just needed to know you were going to be okay.”
“Just like that? No arguments or recriminations?”
“Why should I argue or recriminate? I’m the one who’s been trying to turn you into a private investigator, so go off and privately investigate. I’ll cover the store.”
I rocket out of my chair and race for the stairs. “Thank you so much, Zack. If you ever want me to cover for you, just let me know.”
He mutters into his coffee. “Mmm-hmm.”
I jump into my clothes and hurry into town. Once I get there, I face a new problem. Without a car, I can’t get to the police station to tell David my idea. Then I spot his cruiser in front of the day care center.
I rush over and meet him coming out. He smiles at me. “Hello. What’s up?”
“Could we go over to Peterborough for a while?” I ask. “All of Jose Santiago’s old contacts are there. He only just moved here, so anyone who knew him or cared about him will still be over there. I got Zack to cover the store, but I need a car to get there. What do you say?”
He checks his watch. “I have to stop by the station to file a few reports, but then I’m all yours. Should only take a few minutes.”
“Great.” I hop into his car and wait in the passenger seat while he dashes into the station.
Ten minutes later, he comes back and we motor onto the highway on our way to Peterborough. “All right, Detective,” he teases. “Who’s first?”
“Jose’s ex-wife. She lives at 75 Hawthorne Street in the Haven subdivision.”
He nods and easily finds the house. He parks at the curb and eyes me on the side. “You take the lead on this.”
“Me!” I exclaim. “Why me?”
“We’re not here in an official capacity. We’re just interested citizens. I can’t interview anybody as a detective because the investigation hasn’t progressed that far. It will go over much better coming from you. You have a knack for getting people to lower their defenses.”
I scan the house. It’s a typical suburban A-frame like so many others. It’s a cookie-cutter copy of any other house on any other street in the country. “All right. If you say so.” I get out of the car.
Now that I face the house, a curious sensation creeps up my spine. I never considered myself a professional investigator before. I might not be getting paid, but here I am, leading the way and taking the reins from a truly professional investigator.
In the past, I interviewed people and asked questions in a casual, offhand way. I never really invested much in solving these crimes because I considered myself a bystander of very little importance.
Maybe I misjudged myself all this time. Maybe I’m a lot better at this than I realized. Maybe I have what it takes to do this job after all.
I can’t back out with David right behind me, either. I march up the steps with more courage than I feel and knock on the door. A man with thinning hair and glasses answers.
I give him my brightest smile. “Hi, there. We’re looking for Marta Santiago.”
He draws himself up straighter. “She’s Marta Barnes now, and I’m her husband, Jamie Barnes. What’s this all about?”
“We just wanted to talk to her about Jose Santiago’s death. Do you mind if we ask you a few routine questions? It’s nothing serious. We just want to get some information about your last connections with Jose.”
He holds the door open. “Okay. Come in. Marta’s in the conservatory.”
He shows us into a living room. A huge glass wall affords a stunning view into a massive greenhouse packed to the ceiling with tropical plants. The minute we walk in, a short, dark-complexioned woman slides aside the double doors and enters.
“We didn’t come here to accuse you, but you have to understand you would be the first ones we would want to talk to.” I study Marta. “You’re Michael’s mother, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am,” she replies, “but I haven’t seen him in a while. He stopped visiting when I married Jamie.”
“Why is that? Did the two of them not get along?”
“It was my kids he didn’t get along with,” Jamie replies. “I have four of them from my previous marriage, and Michael had both his parents to himself up until we got married. Then all of a sudden, he had to compete with all of them for her attention. It was a lot noisier and more chaotic than anything he was used to. He didn’t like it.”
“He said he would rather stay with his dad than come visit here,” Marta adds. “He was seven at the time. We all figured he was old enough to know his own mind, and we could see the visits only stressed him out. They made him withdrawn and emotionally distraught. We didn’t think it was healthy for him to force him to visit under the circumstances. I figured we could pick up our relationship again when he got older.”
“What about when Jose died?” I ask. “Didn’t the police ask you to take Michael then? He’s telling everyone nobody wants him.”
“The police never asked us to take him. He would have been welcome here, of course. I would never leave my own son out in the cold.”
I frown. “That’s odd. I wonder why he said that.”
David speaks up behind me. “He told the police he couldn’t stay with you. That’s why they never contacted you.”
I turn to Jamie. “So were you on good terms with Jose?”
“Of course. I had no reason not to be. When the time came to make any major decisions about Michael and visitation and everything, we all got together and discussed it like adults. We were civil, and he didn’t argue over taking Michael full time. He agreed with us that it was the best thing for Michael.”
“I see,” I reply. “Can you tell me where you both were the night of August fifteenth between nine in the morning and seven-thirty that evening?”
“We were both here the whole time,” Jamie tells me. “We can prove it.”
“Really? How?”
“We run our own business out of the house,” he explains. “I was upstairs in my office from nine until about five that afternoon. I was logged onto a secure web portal. It records all my web activity the entire time. That will prove I was here and not running over to West End to kill Jose.”
“And the rest of the time? How about from five until seven-thirty?”
“We had a plumber here from four-thirty until six,” he replies, “and we had the nanny here from three until eight. They can all vouch that we were both here.”
“What about you, Marta?” I ask her. “Can you prove your whereabouts from nine until three?”
She points to a computer set up at a desk in the corner. “I was doing video consultations the whole time. I can show you my Skype account. You can see the recorded evidence that I never left this house.”
I nod more to myself than to them. “That’s all right. I believe you. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.”
David and I leave after a polite goodbye. Once inside his car, I puff out a heavy breath. “Well, that was a complete waste of time.”
“Not at all,” he remarks. “You ruled them out. That’s half the battle. Of course they would both be the first suspects on anybody’s list, and now you can cross them off. So who’s second?”
“Jose’s work. He worked at a fire safety consulting firm over on Castle Street.”
He parks the car in front of a shiny glass-encrusted office building. He opens my door and gives a sweeping bow with a flourish of his hand. “After you, madam.”
“Stop that,” I snap.
His lips twitch holding back a grin and he follows me into the building. I ask at the reception desk and get directions to Jose’s department.
We ride the elevator to the seventeenth floor. Another receptionist points us to Jose’s desk. The calendar by the computer keyboard lies open to the day before his death. A single appointment is scribbled across the page: August 14th. Meeting with Tana Ness-Scott, George Washington High School, 10 AM. He hadn’t marked any other appointments.
While I check the pencil drawer, a man’s head pokes over the cubicle wall. “I heard you telling Jenny you’re here about Jose Santiago’s death.”
“Yeah,” I reply. “Did you know him?”
“Know him!” the man exclaims. “I worked with him every day for over ten years. I knew him better than anybody in this place.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Rick Myers.”
“I’m Margaret Nichols, and this is David Graham. Maybe you can tell us if there was anyone around here he was particularly hostile with—any enemies he might have had or anything like that?”
“Enemies? No. Jose didn’t have enemies—here or anywhere else. That guy didn’t make enemies. He was absolutely level and straight with everyone. Not even troublesome clients got under his skin. He had a way of deflecting tension and animosity so it turned into nothing. I always wished I could be like him.”
“You didn’t say there was no one who was particularly hostile toward him,” I point out. “Can you think of anyone he might have had any conflict with? No one is that pure.”
“Conflict?” He chuckles and shakes his head. “Well, that’s another matter. He and I had conflict—a lot of conflict.”
“In what way?”
“In the professional competition way,” he replies. “Some people who didn’t know us thought we didn’t like each other, but we were more like frenemies if you know what I mean.” He laughed out loud when he said it.
“So what kind of professional competition did you have?” I ask.
“Oh, you know how it is,” he begins.
“No, I don’t,” I tell him. “That’s why I’m asking. What did you do?”
“We competed for clients. We stole clients from each other. We cut each other off at the knees to make sales. We competed for promotions, but it was all in good fun. We used to pull pranks on each other. He used to get so mad!” He bursts out laughing in spite of himself. “Once I rigged a bucket of water to fall on his head when he was on his way into an important client meeting. He had to face the clients soaked to the skin. I ruined his best suit, he said. He vowed revenge. Everybody in the office knew about it. I guess some people who didn’t know us well enough might have mistaken that kind of talk for hatred, but it wasn’t. We were friends. It was all friendly competition, and we both enjoyed it.”
“How do you know Jose enjoyed it?” I ask. “How do you know he wasn’t really mad about it?”
“Because we spent time together outside of work. We went to the bars together when he didn’t have that kid of his to take care of. We talked about stuff. We confided in each other in private where no one would see us. He was the best friend I ever had, and he said the same thing about me to my face more than once. He said he would have gone crazy years ago if he didn’t have me pestering him all the time.” He laughs, but it ends with his eyes misting over. He sniffs back tears. “I really miss that guy. It’s not the same around here without him.”
I hate to disturb him by asking my next question, but I’m here to investigate a murder, not to offer him therapy. “Can you tell me where you were between nine AM and seven-thirty PM on the fifteenth of August?”
He bolts upright like someone shot him in the backside. His head whips around and his eyes fly open. Just as fast, he recovers. He wipes the agitated expression off his face and looks away. “I was just driving around. I drove to Hartford in the morning. Then I took the rest of the day off and went to the cemetery to visit my father’s grave.”
His behavior rings alarm bells in my head. “I don�
��t suppose anybody can vouch for your whereabouts.”
He shakes his head and doesn’t answer.
I brace myself for the hard approach. “You know, Rick, I understand you were Jose’s friend and everything, but if you can’t confirm your whereabouts at the time of his death, you could open yourself up to becoming a suspect in his murder. You wouldn’t want that, would you?” I peeked over the wall into the next cubicle. “Is that your wife and kids in the picture on your desk?”
He wilts before my eyes. “You can’t tell anybody—I mean no one. Understand?”
“Of course not. Whatever you tell us will remain confidential. If you can clear your name with a solid alibi, you’ll never see us or any other investigator again. You’ll be off the hook.”
“All right. I was visiting…..I was visiting a lady in Hartford. Her name is Chelsea Wilmington. I’ve been seeing her for the last two years…on the side, you know. I don’t want my wife to find out—for obvious reasons. That’s the only reason I didn’t say anything.”
“Were you with her all day?” I ask.
He nods. “I left Peterborough at eight-thirty in the morning, and I got to her house at nine, so there’s no way I could have been in West End at the time.”
“So what time did you leave her house?”
“I left at five, and I drove straight home. She can confirm what time I left her place, and my wife can confirm when I got home. You’ll be able to prove I wouldn’t have time to go kill Jose.” He snorts out loud. “Kill Jose! The very idea is ridiculous. I loved that guy like my own brother.”
“One more question, and we’ll leave you to it. Do you happen to know if Jose was seeing anybody—anybody that might have been sweet on him that he didn’t return their feelings? Does that ring a bell?”
He frowns. “He never mentioned anything, but I wouldn’t expect him to tell me anything like that. He never dated that I know of since he split up with Marta. I don’t think he would have told me even if he had been dating. He wouldn’t have said a word until he was ready to walk down the aisle with someone. That’s the way he was. He didn’t like to invest too much in relationships when he was still worried it might not work out. Heck, he definitely wouldn’t have said anything about someone he didn’t care for. He would have gotten rid of them and never acknowledged their presence again. He didn’t beat around the bush with that kind of thing.”
The Sweets of Doom Page 5